Deserting GOP Moderates Could Sink Bush Hopes

by Jim Lobe

(IPS) WASHINGTON -- While the vast majority of Democrats who voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 2000 are now lining up behind Senator John Kerry, Republicans unhappy with President George W. Bush are having a much harder time deciding what to do next Tuesday.

While a relatively small number have apparently decided to take the Nader option, others believe the prospect of four more years of Bush is just too horrible to contemplate and are thus opting for the only candidate who has a chance to defeat him, John Kerry.

Most of the deserters hail from what remains of the "moderate" wing of the Republican Party -- that which since 1952 was identified with the multinational interests of big Wall Street companies, the corporate-welfare state and civil rights.

Indeed, the son of former President Dwight D Eisenhower -- whose victory over isolationist Robert Taft in the 1952 Republican National Convention sealed the domination of the so-called "Rockefeller Republicans" over most of the next 25 years -- announced his endorsement of Kerry in September in a commentary first published in the extreme right-wing 'Manchester (New Hampshire) Union Leader'.

"The fact is that today's 'Republican' Party'," wrote John Eisenhower -- who noted that he changed his life-long party registration to independent after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq -- "is one with which I am totally unfamiliar." He went on to assail the current administration for its profligate spending and its "hubris and arrogance" in foreign affairs.

Perhaps less surprising was an off-hand remark of a sitting Republican senator, Lincoln Chafee, who suggested Monday he will write in a candidate on his ballot rather than vote for Bush.

With control of the U.S. Senate up for grabs Tuesday, his statement was taken by some to mean that the Rhode Island Republican, who is not facing re-election, may abandon his party if Democrats get within one vote of controlling the upper chamber, just as former New England colleague, Sen Jim Jeffords of Vermont, did in May 2001. The current Senate breakdown is 51 to 49.

The diminishing Republican moderates have also been joined by self-described "conservatives", many of whom say they voted for Bush in 2000 in the mistaken belief he would pursue what he called a "humble" foreign policy and remain loyal to the "small-government" principles at the core of U.S. Republican conservatism since World War II.

"(Bush's) continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations," wrote Scott McConnell, executive editor of 'The American Conservative' magazine, in an article titled 'Kerry is the One'. "George W Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism," he added.

The erosion of Bush's Republican or conservative base appears to be part of a national phenomenon best illustrated by the fact that Kerry is securing considerably more newspaper endorsements than the president.

Historically, local newspaper publishers have been Republican. Bush, for example, scored more than twice the number of endorsements as then-Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election.

But according to the latest count by the trade on-line journal, 'Editor and Publisher', Kerry is now leading Bush by 162 to 129, although most of the incumbent's support comes from the dailies of smaller towns. In terms of circulation, readers of Kerry newspapers account for 18.4 million households; for Bush, the number is 12.8 million.

Particularly notable, 38 newspapers that supported Bush four years ago have switched to Kerry, while only six newspapers that backed Gore have moved to Bush. Ten other newspapers -- half of them in key swing states, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania -- that endorsed Bush in 2000 have declined to back either candidate. Most of them have endorsed Republican contenders for decades.

Of course, most right-wing factions, especially those that make up the coalition behind Bush's aggressive unilateralism following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- the "assertive nationalists" identified with Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld; the neo-conservatives who back Israel's Likud Party; and the Christian Right -- are lining up in strong support of the president.

And even some who have been outspoken and relentless in their attacks, particularly on the administration's foreign policy -- notably paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan -- still intend to vote for Bush, in the desperate hope that a second term would be substantially different from the first.

In their view, the president was manipulated by neo-conservatives and others into adopting policies that do not reflect his core values. In this view, Bush has now seen the light and will thoroughly purge his administration, something he could not do until after the election given his refusal to admit to voters that he was wrong.

But that opinion is discounted as wishful thinking by others on the right, such as supply-side guru Jude Wanniski, who exercised considerable influence in the early years of the Reagan administration.

"Because Mr. Bush has told us repeatedly about how he is strengthened by his faith in God, with that faith sustaining him through tough decisions, it goes without saying that if he is re-elected he will be filled with the spirit of vindication", he warned his newsletter subscribers Wednesday.

"There not only would be no changes in the team's view of how the world must be dealt with", Wanniski added in explaining why he will vote for Kerry on Tuesday. "There would also be less restraint in George W. Bush's willingness to shape the world to his divinely inspired vision".

But the most important defections are likely to come from the more-moderate elements that, in any event, have been emigrating from the Republicans as the Christian Right, in particular, has consolidated its control of the party's machinery.

That is why the traditionally Republican New England states, Maine and New Hampshire, could very easily move into Kerry's column Tuesday, while former Republican state office-holders in the upper Midwest, another stronghold of moderate Republicanism, are now speaking out against Bush.

"The truth is that President George W. Bush does not speak for me or for many other moderate Republicans on a very broad cross-section of issues", said William Milliken, who served as Michigan's governor from 1969 to 1983, earlier this month.

He noted that Bush has created "the largest deficit in the history of our country" and "rushed us into a tragic and unnecessary war." Michigan is one of ten critical swing states that went narrowly for Gore in 2000.

Another prominent Michigander, former Chrysler chairman and management expert Lee Iacocca, has also switched. Earlier this year, Iacocca, who was a vocal supporter of Bush in 2000, said he intended to vote for Kerry.